generative oblique strategy

"You can get some appealing effects by just imagining the absent poet as part of the audience. This conceptual approach is what Brian Eno might call an “oblique strategy,” and it can be generative: although I think a lot about what Kees would have made of my Robinson poems, and I want to think he would have liked them, they’re not addressed to him, and, furthermore, he’s not even in them. I’m borrowing his fictional creation and reimagining his own life through that character."

from Conjuring Act in the Poetry Foundation blog

rays of life

"Our Sun comes home to Leo on Sunday, seconds after 6 am EDT. With ingress to its domain, the Sun will make simultaneous aspects to three of the smaller objects that make up its solar system: Asbolus, Eros and Dionysus. Taken together, those three objects symbolize three ways of looking at your life that are different, yet compatible. Because the Sun is our source of life, and because Leo is where the Sun rules, the day named after the Sun may be an auspicious time to reflect on how your life can be more compatible with all life."

from Len Wallick at Planetwaves.net

in search of the miraculous

From the Atlantic's review of the new book, In Search of the Miraculous or One Thing Leads to Another, by designer of icons, Milton Glaser

Although he has written considerably about the nature of design, Glaser says "in this book I've reduced what I've learned to a few hundred words. My sense is that I'm doing less 'showing off' and more 'passing things on'."
The Zen theme of one idea leading to another on a continuum of creative activity derives from Glaser's observation that "there doesn't seem to be such a thing as an unconnected event. Certainly, in my own life and work, the inevitable consequence of one thing influencing another is apparent. Of course, you only have time to realize this retrospectively."
For his exhibition, Glaser created an accordion-folded "Users Guide" to understanding examples on the wall. The book version is more akin Ways of Seeing by John Berger, a critic whom Glaser deeply respects "and who has certainly influenced my thinking." The book uses some of his favorite work as examples of what Glaser believes are the most fundamental issues of design: "intentionality and consequence."
 ...
"We're clearly at a point in human history where the idea of unrestrained competition and a 'dog eat dog' atmosphere are no longer beneficial or relevant," he says. "This shift has certainly affected my view of a designer's role in civilization and culture, and made me more concerned about the consequences of my daily activity. My two prevailing beliefs are still: Do no harm. Do good work."

prayer in practice

"That higher purpose can, surely, only be attained by a mind attuned to subtlety, and this was the overriding message for me of this short show. We are apt to forget that the great difference between a traditional craft and that which is produced by modern industrial processes is the degree of wisdom it reveals. In traditional crafts the tools never become complicated or sophisticated. For all of the wonders they help us produce, they remain basic and very simple. Our modern, sophisticated machines and computers are quite the reverse. All we do is press a button or click a mouse and, as a consequence, we do not grow.

"Only through the daily practice of a craft do we deepen our experience and gain that perception we call wisdom, a perspective gained purely through practical action and the honing of one’s skill.

"In this way craftsmanship is nothing less than prayer in practice. As we work on the outward material, so we work also on the quality of our heart. The external tools are simple; the sophistication lies within."

- Ian Skelly Resurgence magazine Emerging Networks issue

themes for the week

Reading "Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work," a tiny book with a long title by Steven Pressfield. A passage I circled:

"The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do.

"The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away." 

 Bringing to mind Rabbi Rami Shapiro's workshop a few weeks ago on recovery as a path of liberation, on addiction as all the many things and behaviors we give our power away to thinking we'll be able to control reality (and the pain of being human that Pressfield points to) through them. Addiction as a form of idolatry - worshiping something other than the truth.

Also recently read through (need to re-read) "Journey to the Common Good" by Walter Brueggemann, which uses the Exodus story to talk about patriarchy/empire and freedom/wilderness, and the injunction of freedom, which is the covenant of neighborliness (the 10 Words given at Sinai).

 Addiction and art, and exile. 

Liberation and recovery and leaving the narrow places for the wilderness. 

And exile.

incarnation and wholeness

Gematria for Nachash (nun chet shin) = 50 + 8 + 300 = 358
Gematria for Meshiach (mem shin yod chet) = 40 + 300 + 10 + 8 = 358

Nachash is Serpent
Meshiach is Messiah

"Nachash is the guide that tempts us to incarnate. Meshiach is the teacher that leads us to wholeness. Two sides of the same door.

"All experience of pain comes from separation. All experience of joy comes from (re)union. In order to have the chance to re-member (-->joy) we need to choose to first forget." - Rabbi Ted

(going through my notebooks for the past more-than-ten years - this is from 2002)

 cross-posting to life cultivating life

networks --> rhizomes --> all one life

Dr. King:
“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made.”


Eric Francis (Planetwaves June 2012):
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) -- I suggest you take a bold step beyond considering your image or your appearance and fully immerse yourself into your relationship with the world. By that, I mean the world as you think of it: the constellation of everyone and everything in your life. You may be familiar with the Lakota prayer Mitakuye Oyasin, which translates loosely to "all are related." It is an expression of the idea that all people and all things are interconnected. They may be related by being part of our sphere of consciousness, or looking a bit deeper, by the truth that we are part of something larger than ourselves. This of course violates Western concepts of separateness, division and privacy, ideas that lead to quite a bit of chaos and conflict -- which are all based on a violation of natural law. The extraordinary astrology that is now unfolding is a reminder that you are part of holistic existence. Everything you do, and everything you think, influences the totality of your environment. This isn't a theory but rather a property of existence that may boldly reveal itself to you during the next few weeks. Such an experience would shift how you experience yourself in the midst of your reality. Imagine if you could live that interconnectedness all the time. What would change? What would come into your life? What conflict would disappear into the deeper truth that you are related to everything from earth to sky to all members of the human family? Imagine.

power of networks

Ashley says, "A few of my favorite things... From trees to networks. The web of life. Organized complexity and interconnectedness. The need for new ways of thinking... network thinking. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this RSA Animate."

there is an "essence of love"

From David Spangler's newsletter:

"...let me offer my definition of love. After all, the quality of light that a bulb gives off is the same however the dimmer switch is set. Dim light is no different from bright light in its “essence of light”; dim and bright light are both comprised of photons in motion.   In an analogous way, there is a quality to love that is the same wherever the expression of it is along this spectrum; there is an “essence of love.” What is that?

            I think this deep quality of love isn’t an emotion; it’s not about attraction, acceptance, approval, or even affection. Rather, I think of it as an act of nourishment, a way of holding another so that that other’s unique character and identity can find its wholeness and an empowering expression of that wholeness in a collaborative connection with creation as a whole. It empowers participation as an individuality in the essential sacredness of creation.

          Love is freeing, not binding, but it is an act that empowers connection: connection with oneself, connection with others, connection with the world, connection with possibility and potential, connection with the Sacred. This connection is one in which each participant can thrive and unfold in safety within themselves, in their relationships, and in what they offer to the world. It is a partnering connection in which each is a gift to the other demanding nothing in return. As such, love reveals and expresses the ultimate Gift through which the Sacred gives itself that the universe may exist and unfold. Each act of love replicates to some degree that primal Gift."

xoox